Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

This may come as a shock, but my second-favorite holiday is, and always has been, Valentine’s Day. It’s one of those things I could never really explain. As a child, I loved seeing the decorations, looking at the cute things for sale,  receiving little cards from classmates that otherwise wouldn’t give me a second thought, and, possibly above all else, trying to make sentences out of the little conversation heart candies. I’d spend countless hours at the kitchen table, trying to make a love note that said something like “Hey You. Let’s Kiss. Be Mine. Love You.” Terribly romantic stuff, I know. As I got older, it became sort of the “in thing” to hate Valentine’s Day, especially if you were single, but even at the loneliest points in my life, I could never bring myself to do such a thing. I don’t think I ever saw the holiday as being exclusively about romantic love. For me it was always about just love and happiness in general. Be it romantic love, friendship, family, a pet,...

Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved pumpkins. Not all pumpkins can last forever, though. So there came a day when one of her pumpkins started to rot. Luckily, the girl had a beloved sister. Maybe they weren’t connected by blood, but they were bonded together by mutual understanding and acceptance. Her sister carved the pumpkin into a tiny jack o’lantern for the girl and all of her spooky Halloween friends. “Where did the pumpkin go?” Little Horus the ghost asked one night. Calling upon Sam to come and investigate.  “Something ate him!” said Sam. “A raccoon, most likely. I do hope it was a nice meal.” “And now” said Sam “I have a nice hat!”

There are some people who toss out their pumpkins almost the very second that Halloween ends. There are some that let them hang around until Thanksgiving, and then promptly dispose of them, because Heaven forbid we have pumpkins at Christmas. As you can probably imagine, I am neither of these. I believe in holding onto a pumpkin, and keeping it in sight, until the day comes that it’s squishy, moldy, or otherwise rotten. My record holder lasted until exactly Halfoween (that’s May 1st on the Gregorian calendar) before having to be put out to pasture. That said, we lost one yesterday. The first pumpkin of the 2019 season to depart for whatever the pumpkin version of the Rainbow Bridge might be called. (Rotting Bridge?)  Our dearly departed was purchased on my vacation to Delaware last September, from a little farm called Fifer Orchards. She (yes, she was a she, as she eventually wound up with a drawn-on face with eyelashes most human women would kill for) was know...

  I said my New Year’s resolution was to finally start a blog, so let’s just get right into it, shall we? You may have noticed from my subject line here that my perception of the calendar is likely quite different from most.  Why is that? Because I believe we should do more of what makes us happy. And what makes me happy, is living in an eternal state of October. To say that Halloween is my life would honestly be putting it mildly. I became obsessed at the age of four, after being coaxed out from under a table by a favorite aunt and encouraged to go out and trick or treat. From that night on, I don’t think I ever really stopped talking about Halloween and looking forward to when the next one would arrive. My life became an eternal countdown to Halloween, until one day, probably much later than I should have, I realized, why wait?  Now, as what society deems an “adult”, I celebrate Halloween all year round. That is probably a good chunk of what w...